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THE BLACK MOOSE 

IN PENNSYLVANIA 



BY 



HENRY W. SHOEMAKER 

(Author of " Pciinsvlvania Deer and Their Horns '*, etc.) 




Altoona, Pennsylvania 

Published by THE ALTOONA TRIBUNE COMPANY 

= 19 17 = 



Copyrighted — All Rights Reserved 




Typical Maine Moose Head (Killed in 1902 by Samuel Merrill). 
(Frontispiece) 



THE BLACK MOOSE 



IN PENNSYLVANIA 



BY 



HENRY W. SHOEMAKER 

(Author of "Pennsylvania Deer and Their Horns", etc.) 



" The kingly Lyon, and the strong arin'd Benre 
The large lini'd Mooses, ivith the tripping Deare, 
Quill darting Porcupines, and Rackcoones bee, 
Castelled in the hollow of an aged tree." 

— William Wood, 1634 



Altoona, Pennsylvania 
Published by THE ALTOONA TRIBUNE COMPANY 

=z== 19 17 ^= 



Copyrighted— All Rights Reserved 






APR 26 1917 

©CI.A4f>0497 



5X 



r^ 



INDEX TO CHAPTERS. 



Chapter. Page. 

I. Fossil Remains 5 — T 

II. Historical Evidence 8 — IT) 

III. Traditional E\idence 16 — 21 

IV. Summary •. . 22 — 2T 

\'. Moose Horns 28—31 

\'I. The OriHnal 32—15 




SETH IREDELL NELSON (1809-1905) 

A Hunter Possessing Definite Data Concerning 

the Black Moose in Pennsylvania, 



I. FOSSIL REMAINS. 



WHEN the writer first visited the hunting lodge 
home of Seth Iredell Nelson (1809-1905) at 
Round Island, Clinton County, in August, 
1899, he noticed a medium-sized set of moose-horns 
hanging on the wall of the great Nimrod's living- 
room. Having heard traditional stories of the occa- 
sional appearance of the Black Moose or Original in 
Pennsylvania, the thought flashed through his mind. 
"Those may he the antlers of a Pennsylvania Moose." 
Upon asking Nelson where the horns came from, the 
magnificent old hunter replied that they were Canad- 
ian horns, sent to him some years hefore by a party 
who had once hunted with him in Pennsylvania in 
deer season. "LUtt," added the old Nimrod, "there 
once were moose in Pennsylvania." Asked if he had 
ever seen any, he replied that he never had, that the 
last were gone long before his day, but that he had 
killed at least 500 elk, sometimes called "grey moose" 
in the Pennsylvania forests. That same fall, the 
writer heard that a farmer named John Hennessy, 
about 1850, as near as could be ascertained, 
while grubbing stumps on the edge of the Tamarack 
Swamp in Northern Clinton County, had unearthed 
a pair of fresh looking moose horns. When 
Samuel N. Rhoads published his great work, 
''Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey," in 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 



]!)()o, tlie writer found little comfort in the assump- 
tion that moose had wandered into Pennsylvania in 
post-Columbian days. This is what Rhoads has to 
say under title of "Eastern Moose" : "The fossil re- 
mains of moose have been found in Pennsylvania 
caves. Certain statements of earliest travellers imply 
that the moose was found on the west shores of the 
Pludson River opposite New York and in Northeast- 
ern Pennsylvania. There is a Moosic in Lackawanna 
County ; ^ Moosehead in Luzerne County, and Chicka- 
lacamoose in Clearfield County. In Doughty's 'Cab- 
inet of Natural History,' \'olume L Page 281, a Phila- 
del])hia correspondent says that the horns of moose 
were found in a salt lick in the Allegheny Mountains, 
Pennsylvania, near the New York State line. These 
items are here noted in support of the theory that the 
moose in late pre-Columbian times wandered into the 
Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania from its more 
favored haunts in the lake regions of New York. 
Miller states 'it once ranged throvighout the State of 
New York.' If this can be verified by history it 
would be an interesting fact, at once removing any 
improbability of its range in parts of Northern Penn- 
sylvania, quite as well suited to its needs." Rhoads 
further states that fossil remains of the East Amer- 
ican Moose {Aires Ainericaniis Jar dine) dating from 
the Pleistocene period were found in the Durham 
Cave, near Reigelsville, Bucks County, and that a, 
skeleton of Scott's Fossil Moose (cervalccs scotti 
Lydckkcr) also of the Pleistocene period were un- 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN" PENNSYLVANIA. 7 

earthed from a shell marl beneath a bog at Mount 
Hermon, Warren County, New Jersey. It will be the 
purpose of the following, pages to endeavor to show 
that the Black Moose was present in Pennsylvania as 
an irregular migrant or straggler within the last one 
hundred and twenty-five years, citing as evidence, the 
writings of reliable travellers and historians, and the 
traditions of old hunters who were themselves sons 
of old hunters. That it is not a case of confusion of 
Nomenclature, for Rhoads states that somewhere in 
Dr. B. S. Barton's writings the grey moose or wapiti 
is called the "Original," will also be demonstrated, as 
the old-fashioned hunters were very jealous and proud 
of their knowledge of the different kinds and species 
of wild animals. 




11. HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 



HISTORICAL evidence of the presence of the 
niack Moose in Pennsylvania, thou.g^h not plen- 
tiful is convincing. Dr. j. D. Schoepf, the dis- 
tinguished German army surgeon and naturalist, who 
travelled through Pennsylvania in 17S;)-1T8I, has this 
to say in his "Travels in the Confederation," \'ol. I, 
Page KM, in speaking of the vicinity of Heller's Tav- 
ern, one mile south of the Wind Gap in Northampton 
County : "The farmers were not well content with 
their lands. The nearness of the mountains hrings 
them in A\'inter unpleasant visits from wolves and 
now and then, bears. And there is no lack of other 
sort of game ; deer and foxes are numerous ; elks 
wander hither at times. From several descriptions 
furnished by people hereabouts, it seems that they 
give th.e name Elk to the Moose as well as to the Lia- 
nadian stag, and so give rise to errors. Both animals 
come down from the North, where one is known as 
Moose, Black ^loose or Original, and the other (the 
Canadian stag) as Grey Moose to distinguish it from 
the hrst." On page 243 of the same voluine, the tal- 
ented author, in speaking of the Allegheny Moun- 
tains between Carlisle and' Fort Pitt (Pittsburg) re- 
marks : "The commonest wild animal is the Virginia' 
deer : the Grey Moose, very similar to the European 
stag has also been seen in these woods, but it is morz 




C. W. DICKINSON, 

A Living Pennsylvania Hunter Whose Memory Retains Many 

Interesting Reminiscences of the Moose. 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 9 

numerous in Canada. The Black Moose or elk, is 
seen here but rarely." H. Hollister, in his inimitable 
"History of the Lackawanna Valley," puljlished in 
1857, in speaking of Tripp's Meadow, near Scranton, 
a hunting and camping-ground highly thought of by 
Indians and early white settlers, says : "Around this 
camp game was abundant. The elk and the fleeter 
moose stood among their native pines, or thundered 
onward like the tread of cavalry, the deer in fearless 
mood browsed on the juicy leaf, while the mountain 
sides, though stern with wilderness offered to the 
panther or the bear little shield from the well-poised 
arrow of the Indian." On Page 210, the same author 
says : "The Moose, from which the mountain range 
bordering the Lackawanna — The Moosic — derived its 
name, were found here in great abundance. Deer and 
elk, at that period thronged along the mountains in 
such numbers that droves often could be seen brows- 
ing upon the budding saplings or lazily basking in the 
noonday sun." In Doughty's "Cabinet of American 
History," Volume I, Page 28L a Philadelphia cor- 
respondent tells of the finding of a fresh-appearing 
set of Moose antlers in a salt lick near the New York 
State line. Investigation of this account showed that 
the antlers in question were unearthed in 1819 by 
Jim Jacobs, "The Seneca Bear Hunter," a noted In- 
dian hunter at a swamp which was situated in Brad- 
ford, McKean County, in the center of what is now 
the City Park. This would show conclusively that 
the Moose, in post-Columbian times ranged into 



10 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

Northwestern Pennsylvania. If at one time they 
"ranged all over New York State" it would be nat- 
ural that they would frequent the headwaters of the 
Allegheny River just across the line in Pennsylvania. 
But as Western New York was opened to civiliza- 
tion they withdrew to their hiding places in the North 
Woods, only venturing South when driven by severe 
winters and then throttgh the last unbroken stretch of 
forest from the Adirondacks to the Catskills, and 
thence into the wilds of Northeastern Pennsylvania — • 
keeping close to the Catskill-Allegheny Mountain 
backbone. Tales of the presence of the Moose in the 
Keystone State will also be found in "More Pennsyl- 
vania Motmtain Stories," Chapter I (Reading, 1913), 
"The Indian Steps," Chapter I (Reading, 1913), and 
"Juniata Memories." Cha])ters IX, XXI \^ and XXVI 
(Philadelphia, 191()), by the author of these pages. 
Other mention of the Black Moose in Pennsylvania 
is occasionally made in county histories, romances and 
poems of the Northern and Eastern parts of the State. 
Careful research will undoulitedly bring further valu- 
able references to light. The Black Moose has left his 
name indelibly along the entire route of his latterly 
migrations through Pennsylvania. There is a Moose's 
Wood Pond in Kidder Township, Carbon County. 
There were said to be Moose Ponds in Susquehanna, 
Wayne and Pike Counties. There is a Moosehead 
(in Foster Township) and Moosic Mountain — "The 
Imperial Moosic" of the Poet Caleb Earl Wright, in 
Tuzerne County. In Lackawanna County, in addition 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 11 

to the Moosic Mountain there are two Moosics, one 
a town of four thousand inhabitants in Old Forge 
Township, the other a hamlet in Newton Township, 
and a Moosic Lake in Jefferson Township. There is 
a Moose Run in Centre County in Boggs Township ; 
the Moshannon, i. e., Moosc-hannc or Moosc-strcaju, 
forms the western boundary of Centre County, di- 
viding it from Clearfield County. The Black Mosh- 
annon, or Black Moose-strcani is a creek in Centre 
County. In Clearfield County is found a J\Ioose Run 
in Huston Township, and Moose Run Station, also 
Upper Moose Creek, (Lawrence Township), and 
Moose Creek (Girard Township). Clearfield' town, 
the seat of justice, was formerly called Chickalaca- 
moose. The Moshannon rises near the northern bor- 
der of Blair County, at the Three Springs. In the ex- 
treme southern limit of the range there is said to be 
a Moose Creek in Somerset County. On account of 
so many small lakes in Pennsylvania having been re- 
named with fanciful names by influential summer col- 
onists within the past twenty years, the historic names 
have been discarded, but old settlers in the neighbor- 
hoods can give the real names in every instance ; in 
this way it is thought that eventually some of the 
"moose" names will be restored. In Sullivan County 
the beautiful and romantic Lewis' Lake was re- 
christened "Eagles Mere" by summer boarding-house 
keepers. It is held by some that Elk Lick, Somerset 
County, was named for the Moose, which was called 
"Elk" by many German pioneers, as well as for the 



12 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 



true Elk or Wapiti. At any rate Black Moose were 
seen in the vicinity of this swale shortly before rne 
Revolutionary War. Dr. C. Hart Merriman in his 
splendid report of the animals of the Adirondack 
Mountains, published by the Linnean Society in New 
York in 1884 states that the last moose in the "North 
Woods" of New York was killed on Raquette Lake, 
Hamilton County, in August, ISGl. The height of 
this last specimen, which was a female, was seven 
feet at the hump and weighed 800 pounds. Samuel 
Merrill in his authoritative and fascinating "Moose 
Book" published in New York, in 191G, thus de- 
scribes the slaughter: "A party of four men from 
Philadelphia, including a lawyer and a physician with 
two guides, were on a fishing trip in two boats. One 
sportsman fired a charge of buckshot into her shoul- 
der at 50 yards' distance ; another fired' a charge of 
number 6 shot, and the guides each added a rifle ball."' 
Among the last men in New York to kill a moose was 
Hon. Horatio Seymour, Governor of the State, the 
antlers of which were admired for many years at his 
home at Deerfield, Oneida County. The Governor 
killed his moose at Jock's Lake, Herkimer County, in 
1859. Alva Dunning, a well-known hunter, killed 
several moose on West Canada Creek in 1860. Ver- 
planck Colvin, State Engineer of New York, in his 
report on the "Adirondack Wilderness" transmitted 
to the Legislature at Albany in April, 187-1. says : "As 
a matter of Zoological and general interest. I may 
mention that in a few of the most remote portions of 




LEWIS DORMAN (1820-1905). 
Friend and Protege of Josiah Roush, "The Terrible Hunter." 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 13 

the wilderness, we have met with indications of the 
Moose, which to some of the guides seemed unmis- 
takable. This gigantic deer is, however, almost ex- 
tinct in the Adirondacks, and I would suggest that it 
be made, in future, unlawful to kill or destroy the 
animal at any season." From the above it will be 
noted that the Black Moose held on in its Nbrthern 
fastnesses for three quarters of a century after its 
extirpation in Pennsylvania. Moose have since been 
re-introduced in New York, but it is not known for 
certain whether the experiment will prove a success. 
In the Catskills, situated midway between the Adiron- 
dacks and' the Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, Black 
Moose were noticed during the first decade of the 
Nineteenth Century. At one time, at least, Moose 
were found in Connecticut, and a cow moose was kill- 
ed within two miles of Boston, Massachusetts, in 
I'iSl. Jim Jacobs, the discoverer of the Moose horns 
in the swamp in Littleton, now called Bradford, Mc- 
Kean County, was one of the most interesting figures 
in the sporting annals of Pennsylvania. He was a 
grandson of Captain Jacobs, the brave defender of 
Fort Kittanning, and his mother was a daughter of 
the Seneca chieftain, Cornplanter. He was therefore 
of the Indian aristocracy. **The Seneca Bear Hunt- 
er," as the great Nimrod w^as generally called, was 
born near Gaw^ango, on Cornplanter's Reservation in 
Warren County (the house, the oldest in the Reser- 
vation, is still standing) in 1790. From the time he 
was old enough to "tote a gun" he was noted as a 



14 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

. — / 

slayer of big game. Innumerable were the elks, deer 
and bears that fell before his unerring rifle. On June 
25, 181-i, with Captain John Titus and other Senecas, 
he participated in the famous march, SO miles, be- 
tween sunrise and sunset, between Cold Spring on the 
Seneca Reservation and Lundy's Lane, on the Niaga- 
ra River, participating in the battle of that name and 
helping to win the victory for the American forces. 
In 18G7 he killed an elk in Flag Swamp, Elk County, 
that by some authorities is held to be the last native 
wild elk killed in Pennsylvania. He was several 
times married. By his first wife, according to C. W. 
Dickinson, he had one daughter, who died of con- 
sumption while still in her teens. By other wives he 
had two sons. John C. French says that probably Jim 
Jacobson (also a noted elk hunter) and "Dan" 
Gleason, the wolf hunter, were his sons. On the night 
of Fel)ruary 31, 1880, there was a great blizzard in 
Northern Pennsylvania. Jacobs, then in his 90th 
year, happened on the tracks of the Erie Railroad, 
near Bradford, when he was hit by a freight train and 
killed. P. L. Webster, an aged citizen of Littleton 
or Bradford, who died' recently, is authority for this 
account of the "Bear Hunter's" taking off. John C. 
French of Roulette, Potter County, historian and lit- 
terateur, states that in Indian summer, 1881, \Yhile in 
the Seneca Reservation near Carrolltown, he met Jim 
Jacobs in the forest, carrying his long rifle, and that 
he engaged in an interesting conversation with him. 
He was seen by others in the Reservation up to that 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 



15 



time and later. "But," adds Mr. French, "my see- 
ing 'The Seneca Bear Hunter' does not prove that he 
was aHve. The Indians were firm behevers in ghosts, 
and if he was actually killed a year or two previous- 
ly, they would have said that I merely saw his shade 
revisiting the favorite hunting grounds." 




III. TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE. 



TRADITIONAL information concerning the pres- 
ence of the Moose in Pennsylvania is not lack- 
ing. Every old hunter can talk freely on the sub- 
ject, and will relate what was told him by his father or 
his father's father on this subject. The gist of the evi- 
dence is convincing, as it all dove-tails togetlicr so 
nicely; it is not a heterogeneous collection of irrecon- 
cilable statements. Beginning with Seth Iredell Nel- 
son there was not a single old-timer interrogated who 
had any doubts as to the presence of the animal in 
Pennsylvania or its identity. John Q. Dyce, prob- 
ably the most intelligent and best informed of the old- 
er generation of Pennsylvania hunters, declared that 
the Aloose had a "crossing" on the West Branch near 
Reno\'0, which they followed to Chickalacamoose 
and along the Allegheny summits to Somerset Coun- 
ty. Clement F. Herlacher cjuotes Josiah Roush as 
saying to Lewis Dorman that the Moose in Pennsyl- 
vania was called the "Original" that it meant that the 
moose was the "ancestor" or "daddy" of the entire 
deer tribe. Roush, who was known as "The Terrible 
Hunter," trailed deer in the snow, using no weapons, 
killing them by running them to the water, and plung- 
ing in after them and drowning them in mid-stream. 
In one of his solitary hunts he penetrated to Pike 
County where he met a redman named Tahment 

16 




JIM JACOBS (1790-1880) 

'The Seneca Bear Hunter," Who Found a Set of Moose Antlers 

In McKean County in 1819. 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 17 

Swasen, probably the Indian hunter of that name who 
was so admired by the gifted Thoreau, and who told 
him the meaning of the word "Original."' From con- 
stant exposure in icy waters Roush became "knotted 
with rheumatism," finally succumbing from an attack 
of pneumonia at his home near Woodward, Centre' 
County, at the early age of -io years. Merrill in his 
"Moose Book" conclusively proves that the name is 
not original but orignal, and is derived from a Basque 
word orenac meaning deer. This was corrupted by 
the French Canadians into orignac and then to Orig- 
nal. In Pennsylvania it was Original. Swasen claim- 
ed that as the moose was the only species of deer 
found on all continents it proved him to be the 
progenitor of the entire cervine race. No trustworthy 
information has come to the writer that the moose 
bred in Pennsylvania. John Q. Dyce said : "They 
probably bred in the State at one time." Other old 
hunters made the same guarded remark. Jesse Logan, 
grand-nephew of James Logan, "The Mingo Orator," 
wdio was born in 1809, and died on February IT of 
last year, had heard of the presence of Moose in 
Pennsylvania during his father's lifetime, but said it 
was the scarcest of all the wild animals of the Com- 
monwealth. He had heard that in the deep pools of 
the Moshannon, or "Moose Stream," the moose were 
in the habit of bathing, performing strange evolutions 
when the horns of the crescent moon were up-turnea, 
that no Indian would kill a moose at that time, that 
Chickalacamoose (now Clearfield) meant "the meet- 



18 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

ing place of the moose." A Moose, one of the last 
killed in Pennsylvania, was shot at one of these pools, 
and Captain John Logan (Jesse's grandfather), who 
lived nearby, fastened the antlers over the door of his 
cabin to bring good luck. "But," added Jesse Logan 
reflectively, "Captain Logan had bad luck every day 
he lived under the moose horns, and was finally put 
out by a white man who claimed' to own the ground 
on which the shack stood." Generally speaking, 
Moose horns above a door were supposed to bring 
good luck. Joshua Roush stated that the moose al- 
ways crossed into Pennsylvania at one particular 
point, near Narrowsburg on the Delaware River, from 
there the path led southwesterly along the Allegheny 
highlands clear to the Maryland line. The Wind Gap 
in Northampton County was evidently an outlet for 
the Moose to Southeastern Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey. Wind Gap is only ten miles as the crow flies 
to the mouth of Martin's Creek on the Delaware 
River. Very old people in that section can tell of 
the occasional appearance of Moose in the Wind Gap 
up to the last decade of the Eighteenth Century. 
There is a story of a moose being killed by Moravian 
Indians on Moose Run, Centre County, of another 
killed' on Burgeon's Run, Blair County, and one or 
two driven South by dogs, slain near the Juniata in 
the vicinity of McVeytown, but the dates are uncer- 
tain. Jesse Logan stated that the Black Moose was 
not seen in Northwestern Pennsylvania in his day, 
but the finding of a comparatively fresh-looking set 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 19 

of Moose antlers at the salt-lick (now the centre of 
the City Park' of Bradford, McKean County) in 1819, 
and the prevalence of the Moose-Wood or Leather- 
wood, show that they were present in that section 
probably a generation earlier. C. W. Dickinson, born 
in 181:2, a great authority on wild life topics, who 
resides at Smethport, McKean County, states that 
when he was a boy he heard some of the old gray- 
haired men say that they had been told that there were 
Black Moose on the headwaters of Pine Creek 
(Tiad'aghton) in an early day, but that he never heard 
anyone say that they saw one. That would establish 
the presence of Moose in Northern Potter and Tioga 
Counties, completing the evidence that they lived at 
one time along the entire "Northern Tier" of Penn- 
sylvania Counties. It is stated that the early Scotch- 
Irish settlers along the Juniata River referred to the 
Moose as the Black Elk. It is understood that this 
name was sometimes applied in Ireland to the extinct 
"Irish Elk" (Megaceros hibernicus) ; it would seem 
that the pioneers from the Emerald Isle noted the re- 
semblance between the palmated antlers of the ex- 
tinct forest monarch dug up in their own bogs and the 
Black Moose of their new Pennsylvania home. There 
are some who claim that the Black Moose was a regu- 
lar resident of Pennsylvania, breeding in the State up 
to the years immediately following the Revolutionary 
War. As names, dates and places are lacking, and in 
the face of documentary evidence, and the views of 
naturalists like Rhoads and others to the contrary, it 



20 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 



must be regarded as the veriest tradition. According 
to Boyd's "Indian Local Names," Chickalacamoose, 
now Clearfield, Clearfield Comity, signifies "It comes 
together," or "The meeting place." As before noted, 
according to Jesse Logan, it meant "meeting place of 
the Moose," a far more plausible translation of this 
ancient name. In Daniel G. Brinton's "Dictionary of 
the Lenni Lenape," the Delaware word for Moose 
was "Mos." John C. French, speaking of Potter 
County (Northern Pennsylvania) says : "None of our 
oldest meii ever saw a Pennsylvania Moose, though 
Edwin Grimes (born 1830) heard some of the old' 
men, back about 1840, tell of having killed or himted 
'the Original' about L.TO and earlier; both in Penn- 
sylvania and New York. Capt. John Titus, born 
about 1784, said in 1881 — he was nearly 97 years of 
age — that there had been none since he could remem- 
ber in Western New York or Northern Pennsylvania, 
except an occasional traveller from farther north. He 
called them 'Woodeater' and said they were also call- 
ed 'original' by some, as they w'ere the largest — seven 
feet high at shoulders — and were thought to be old- 
er than any other deer species, that their short necks 
and long legs fitted them only for feeding on trees 
and briars, or in water where plants floated on the 
surface, roots three or four feet below. My grand- 
father, William French, born in 1788, said they some- 
times came south of the lakes in New York to the 
Chemung River, while he was a boy living there. The 
following is a memorandum of what my father told 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 21 

me, as he remembered, his grandfathers told him 
about the 'brown elk' as they called them. My great- 
grandfather, John G. Martin, who came from Ireland 
in 1775, to join the Continentals against England, and 
resided in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, after fhe war 
ended, for nearly fifty years, always called the 'Orig- 
inal' or Black Moose a brozvn elk. My father, born 
in 1818, never saw one; but his father, born in 1788, 
saw a few of them in Steuben County, New York, 
and along the Pennsylvania line "in Tioga County, 
while a boy and spoke of them as Originals, and very 
rare — some of them very large." 



^/ r-i 




IV. SUMMARY. 



Irregular Migrations — Range — Habits — Moose Birds — 
Moose Hunters — Final Extermination — The Last 
Mo-ose. 



NEEDLESS to say it is pretty well established that 
the Black Moose was not a permanent resident 
in Pennsylvania during the past five hundred 
years, it was not even an annual visitor, and if it bred 
here, it was after its migrations North were stopped 
by the "ring of steel" of the army of Nimrods along 
the Delaware. During exceptionally cold winters up 
to the last decade of the Eighteenth Century, the 
Moose moved Southward out of their permanent 
abodes in the Adirondack wilderness, crossing the 
Mohawk River at some un-named point, thence fol- 
lowing the Catskill wilderness through Schoharie, 
Greene, Ulster and Sullivan Counties to Narrows- 
burg, where they crossed the Delaware into Pennsyl- 
vania. From thence they followed the main chain of 
the Allegheny Mountains in a southwesterly direc- 
tion through Wayne, Lackawanna, Wyoming, Sulli- 
van, Lycoming, Clinton, Centre, Clearfield, Blair, 
Cambria, Bedford and Somerset Counties to the 
Maryland line, the extreme southern limit of their 
wanderings. They remained true to this path of mi- 
gration, and those seen or killed in Huntingdon, Mif- 

22 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 23 

flin, Westmoreland or Alleg-heny Counties were pre- 
sumably driven there by dogs or Indians ; except that 
evidently there was a regular migration line from 
Wayne County through Pike County, a region remin- 
iscent of the Adirondack's with its evergreens and 
ponds, on through Monroe County to the Wind Gap 
of Northampton County. It is not clear in tlie 
writer's mind if this was the Original's ancient route 
into New Jersey or that the moose noted in the Wind 
Gap were driven there by dogs, but it seems a fair 
supposition that the Wind Gap was their route of in- 
gress to New Jersey. No record has been kept of the 
habits of the Moose during their sojourns in Pennsyl- 
vania. It is agreed that they were of a confiding na- 
ture, indulging in their favorite browse in close prox- 
imity to hunters' cabins. In the winter it probably 
comfarted itself much as it would during mild win- 
ters in the Adirondacks. ]Moose which remained in 
Pennsylvania in the Springtime were fond of bathing 
in the deep holes of their favorite streams. The old 
settlers learned from the Indians when to expect the 
coming of the Moose by the appearance of the Moose 
Bird or Canada Jay {Pcriosorciis Canadensis) . This 
rather thickset, more plainly plumaged relative of the 
common Blue Jay of Pennsylvania, visited Pennsyl- 
vania for the same reason as the Moose, the extreme 
cold weather in the North. Dr. W. T. Hornaday in 
his "American Natural History," says: "The plum- 
age of the Canada Jay has a peculiar fluffy appear- 
ance, suggestive of fur. Its prevailing color is ashy- 



24 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

gray. The nape and back of the head are black, but 
the forehead is marked by a large white spot, 'i'he 
wings and tail are of a darker gray than the body. 
The home of this interesting bird- — the companion of 
the Moose, as well as of forest-haunting man — ex- 
tends from Nova Scotia and Northern New England, 
throughout Canada to Manitoba, and northward to 
the limit of the great forests." As they came by wmg 
it was natural that they could reach Pennsylvania a 
week or ten days before the arrival of the Moose. 
Their coming was the signal for the hunters to get 
ready and many a moose that otherwise might have 
escaped, was forced to run the gauntlet of the fore- 
w^arned and fore-armed Nimrods. Probably an occa- 
sional Moose that was belated in returning North 
gave birth to its calves in Pennsylvania. Merrill says 
that usually two or three were produced at a birth, 
making them the most prolific of the deer family. In 
the extreme Southern limits the calves were born in 
April. For years after the last ^loose had ceased 
coming to Pennsylvania, the visits of the Moose Birds 
set the old hunters on the qui rive ; as in the case of 
the bison in the West and the wild pigeons here, it 
took them a long while to realize that the Moose 
would come no more. John H. Chatham, the Clinton 
County naturalist and poet, saw a Moose bird in Mc- 
Elhattan, that county, in the winter of 1903. It is dif- 
ficult to ascertain just who the hunters -were wdio slew 
the Moose in Pennsylvania, few Indians of note were 
guilty of the slaughter of their beloved Orignal; only 




SAMUEL N. RHOADS, 
The Great Authority on the Mammals of Pennsylvania. 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 25 

the starving rag-tag of the redmen helped in the fi- 
nal extirpation. Doubtless if a list of male residents 
along the backbone of the Allegheny Chain from 
Moosic Mountain, Lackawanna County, to Elk Lick, 
Somerset County, of about the year 1790 could be 
procured, it would be as good a roster of early Penn- 
sylvania Moose hunters as is obtainable. Who killed 
the last moose in Pennsylvania is a mooted point. Ja- 
cob Flegal, a Clearfield County pioneer, is said to have 
killed the moose whose antlers adorned Captain Lo- 
gan's cabin near Chickalacamoose, one of the Buchan- 
ans killed a moose south of the Juniata, near McVey- 
town. Indians killed a moose on ]\Ioose Run. Centre 
County (giving the stream its name) ; Landlord Hel- 
ler's neighbors' dogs caused the death of the moose, 
the antlers of which hung over the main entrance or 
the old stone tavern in the Wind Gap for so many 
years. All these moose were killed during the decade 
between 1780 and 1790; there is no record of any 
having been seen since then. In other Avords, they 
were exterminated' in Pennsylvania about the same 
time as the bison. It has been stated that "Colonel 
John Kelly killed the last bison in Pennsylvania in 
1790 or 1800." As to definite dates, probably the 
moose killed by the Buchanans on the Juniata comes 
as near to being known as any. The old tavern wliich 
this family kept for many years was opened in about 
1790. The moose was killed either that same year or 
the year following. For many years this tavern Avas 
known as "The Bounding Elk," being named for a 



26 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

Black Elk or Moose, which some years before the 
erection of the building', swam the Juniata nearby, but 
was killed before he could take harbor in the south- 
erly forests. Dorcas Holt Buchanan, wife of ''The 
Bounding Elk's" first landlord, was herself an in- 
trepid Nimrod. It is recorded that on one occasion 
when a big deer was chased out of Matawanna Gap 
into the river by dogs the young- woman plunged in- 
to the stream, and catching it jjy the horns, drowned 
it in a pool. Several of the habitues of the tavern 
cheered the plucky girl from the bench at the front 
door, shouting: "Go it, 'Dorkey,' " as she grappled with 
the terrified "Monarch of the Glen." It is related 
that the trick could not have been performed more 
neatly by Shaney John, an Indian hunter, who 
drowned many deer in this way, or by his wnite 
disciple, "Josh" Roush, "The Terrible Hunter" of the 
Seven Mountains. On another occasion while sewing 
by an open window one summer evening. Dorcas 
noticed a wolf looking in at her. Picking up 
the rifle, which she always kept by her side, she ram- 
med the barrel down the frightened animal's throat. 
In this connection it may be well to quote Roush 
further on the Moose in Pennsylvania, as re- 
lated to him by pupils of Shaney John. The old 
Indian said that he had as a boy feasted on "Moose 
nose," a great delicacy, and once had seen a young 
Moose broken to draw a sledge one particularly se- 
vere winter, at a camp near the headwaters of the 
Moshannon River in Blair Countv. The beast hauled 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 27 

a load of hides to the Bald Eagle's Nest in Centre 
County. An Indian hunter named Harthegig was the 
trainer, while two warriors named Tlie Big Cat and 
Killbuck, accompanied the consignment to the nest. 
According to some authorities the European "Elk" 
or Moose has performed similar service in Sweden. 







V. MOOSE HORNS. 



FEW and far between are the traces of Moose horns 
in Pennsylvania. But they do exist, and prob- 
ably in some remote farmhouse garret a set or 
two are still to be found. The writer, when engaged 
in antiquarian studies along the Blue Mountains ac- 
cidentally learned of the last known pair. They hung 
for many years above the front door of Heller's stone 
tavern, near the Wind Gap, in Northampton County, 
once the famous pathway of the Moose from North- 
ern to Southerly regions. It was related that Marks 
John Biddle, a celebrated lawyer of Reading, while 
stojjping at this tavern, when on a horseback journey, 
noticed the horns, and asked about them of the land- 
lord. Old Jacob Heller obliged his guest by taking 
them down and letting him measure them. They had 
a width of 78^^ inches and weighed a trifle over 91 
pounds. Dr. Hornaday in his "American Natural 
History'' tells of a Moose killed in the Kenai Penin- 
sula, Alaska, in 1903, the antlers and skull of which 
weighed 9314 pounds. The Record Moose Horns in 
the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, weigh about 
92 pounds. This Record Moose was taken in the 
Kenai Peinsula in 1899. The late Captain F. C. Sel- 
ous (recently killed in battle in British East Africa) 
stated that the antlers of a Moose which he killed on 
the McMillan River, Canada, in 1004 had a spread of 

2S 




JOHN Q. DYCE (1830-1904), 
A Hunter Who Delighted to Tell of the Times When Moose 
Were Visitors to the Wilds of the Keystone State. 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 29 

663% inches and weighed 75 pounds. Doubtless the 
Moose of Colonial days was a much larger animal 
than any specimens seen today, even the gigantic so- 
called "Alaskan" Moose. By studying the deteriora- 
tion of European Red Deer, by the actual measure- 
ments of horns in various Continental collections and 
actual weights recorded in old-time sportsmen's note 
books, during the past three hundred years from ant- 
lered giants to puny runts, it is doubtless the same 
with our Moose. Like the Red Deer of Europe, the 
Moose of America is hunted ruthlessly for excep- 
tional heads, and is no longer troubled by wolves 
which formerly pulled down the w-eakly and imper- 
fect specimens ; result a sure deterioration. That the 
predatory animals do not deteriorate in size is proved 
by the fact that fossil bones of wolves discovered in 
England are not any larger than those of European 
wolves of the present day. The Wind Gap moose 
horns were taken. Heller said, from a Moose which 
had been driven by dogs at a trot through the Gap, 
and at the Easterly end it had staggered and fallen to 
the roadway from exhaustion. A farmer namea 
Adam Gross got an improvised rope and tackle, and 
swung the huge brute, which he averred weighed at 
least a ton, into his barn. It lived only a week, de- 
spite all manner of attentions devoted to it. The dead 
Moose was propped up astride of a fodder-shocker 
and exhibited in Gross's barn as long as the cold 
weather lasted. Heller remarked that there was an- 
other set of Moose horns on the out-kitchen of Eck- 



30 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

hard's tavern, beyond the Wind Gap, of shiiilar size, 
hut they were not viewed by Mr. Biddle. Several old 
men hanging about the tap-room told Mr. Biddle that 
the Pennsylvania Moose was a creature of appalling 
size, the males often stood eight feet at the hump, that 
the spread of the horns was tremendous but the 
creatures handled these appendages with great dex- 
terity. Marks John Biddle, let it be said, was one of 
the very few gentlemen hunters of his day in Penn- 
sylvania. In his stable at Reading he had a room fit- 
ted up as a museum, with cases all around the walls 
filled with stufifed animals and birds that he had shot. 
On top of the cases were stuffed panthers, one of 
which had a white spot on its breast, and above hung 
the antlers of deer and 'elks. Mr. Biddle was par- 
ticularly fond of elk hunting, and is the gentleman 
who hunted elks "on some barren mountains in 
Northwestern Pennsylvania" in company with Mr. 
Peale of Philadelphia, whicli has been so often 
quoted by natural history writers. De Kay in his 
"Natural Plistory of New York" mentions a set of 
wdiat were probably Adirondack Moose horns in the 
Lyceum of Natural History in New York as being 
48 inches in width. Beside the Pennsylvania horns 
at Pleller's tavern they would have appeared like 
pygmies. Charles Augustus Murray, the distinguish- 
ed English traveller thus describes the Wind Gap. 
"From Owego to Easton the country is undulating, 
wild, wooded and the soil light and poor. A few miles 
from the latter town the road passes through the Blue 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 31 

Ridge of mountains at a point called the Wind-Gap; 
and a most noble situation it is for a temple of Aeolus. 
1 know not the exact elevation, but it is very high, ana 
being the only gorge in the neighborhood, the wind 
sweeps through it with tremendous violence." It 
may be that in the bleak winds of today can be de- 
tected the shrill whistle of the vanished Moose, the 
stalwart Or'ujnal of other days. As stated in previous 
chapters moose horns were found in St. James Park, 
Bradford, about 1819, embedded in the slough of the 
old salt lick, another set was dug out of the Tamarack 
Swamp, in Northern Clinton County, by a farmer 
named John Hennessy about 1850, and another set 
adorned the lintel of Captain Logan's cabin at Chick- 
alacamoose the last years of the Eighteenth Century. 
This last named Moose is said to have weighed, in- 
cluding antlers, over one thousand pounds after 
death. According to some it was killed by Logan 
himself, by others it was claimed that pioneers named 
Smith and Flegal were the slayers. Ii is to be hoped 
that information leading to the discovery of other 
sets of Pennsylvania Moose horns will Ije forthcom- 
inef. 




VI. THE ORIGINAL. 



A Tale of Kittanning Point. 



Reprinted from "Juniata Memories," by Henry W. Shoe- 
maker. 

^Copyrighted by J. J. McVey, Philadelphia, 1916.) 



KITTANNING POINT is a spot pre-eminent in 
Pennsylvania song and story. As a pivotal point 
in history it will always be remembered ; as a 
scenic glory it is the envy of all the States. And in 
legendary lore it holds a secure place, for clustered 
about it are many weird and curious traditions, some 
of which still linger only in the hearts and minds of the 
old folks. Those few of the tales which have been 
v/ritten out are read and re-read with breathless in- 
terest. Still there are others unrecorded that possess 
a thrill or charm worthy of competent chroniclers. 
History tells us that many Indian paths converged at 
Kittanning Point, including the main pathway from 
Aughwick to Fort Kittanning, consequently it was a 
frequent meeting place of the savages in their jour- 
neys across the mountains. They often camped near 
the springs in Kittanning Gap, or on Burgoon's Run, 
and many are the arrow points and other relics picked 
up thereabouts by persons of quick wit. In addition to 
the Indian paths, the Point was a favorite "crossing" 
for many kinds of wild animals. While out of the 
line of the bison, whose main trails were further east 

32 




Dr. Owen Jacobs (at right) and son Ezra (late of U. S. A.) 
Descendants of Captain Jacobs, of Fort Kittanning Fame. 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 33 

and further west, these noble creatures sometimes 
summered on the liigh mountains in small bands, com- 
ing to and from their fastnesses through the Gap. It 
was a favorite rallying ground for the elk and deer. 
They were so plentiful in Revolutionary days that all 
the hunters had to do was to penetrate the forests a 
few steps from their camps in order to have venison 
for dinner. And at that only the hindquarters or the 
saddles were used. A few elk lingered long in this 
region, ranging between the Point and Laurel Ridge, 
where one of the last killed in the State was slain at 
the Panther's Rock, in Somerset County, about the 
middle of the last century. Panthers also had a 
"crossing" over Kittanning Point. It was on one of 
their "migratory lines" between West Virginia and 
Central Pennsylvania. They always traveled by the 
same paths, consequently a hunter with a fair degree 
of patience would surely be rewarded. This "fixity" 
of travel was one of the reasons for their practical ex- 
tinction in our Commonwealth. The wolves were 
prevalent at the Point until comparatively recent 
years, principally on account of the abundance of 
game. When it decreased, they left for more product- 
ive regions. Bears were often found about the Point, 
as the fine chestnut and walnut trees gave them rich 
"pickings" in the autumn months. In the Gap were 
several bear dens, which are still pointed out by the 
old hunters. These bears were all of the black vari- 
ety. But most interesting of all the wild life, large 
and small, which ranged over these now desolated hills 



34 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

was the Black Moose. This mammoth animal, known 
in pioneer days in Pennsylvania by the quaint name 
of the Original, and elsewhere as Orignal, which is 
derived, according to Samuel Merrill, the great auth- 
ority on Moose, from the Basque word Orciiac mean- 
ing deer, was particularly partial to the glades and 
vales about Kittanning Point in the years immediate- 
ly preceding the Revolution. In fact, its path for mi- 
gration passed over the Point in a southwesterly di- 
rection. In these migrations these huge beasts made 
a i)ractice of tarrying for several days amid the grand 
primeval hardwoods which covered the Point. Des- 
pite its size, for it is the largest of all deer, extinct or 
existing, the Original was very fleet of foot and well 
able to take care of itself. As far back as tradition, 
goes there is no record that the moose ever bred in 
Pennsylvania to any considerable extent. They were 
distinctively a northern animal, though they had been 
coming to this State for untold ages, as their fossil 
remains well show. Pennsylvania was about the 
southerly limit of their migrations. After Southern 
New York had been opened to settlement, and the 
forests between the southern border of the Adiron- 
dack ^Mountains and the Pennsylvania State line cut 
away, the moose were unable to continue their jour- 
neys into the wilds of the Keystone State. The last 
to enter Pennsylvania came from the Catskill Moun- 
tains, crossing the Delaware River at various points 
north of the Water Gap. When the migrations ceased 
those moose already in Pennsylvania had to remain 




CLEMENT F. HERLACHER. 

Whose Mind Is a Veritable Store House of Traditions of 

"Moose Days." 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 35 

there, and they were cruelly butchered by the settlers. 
Perhaps on account of their all-time scarcity in our 
State, the early Indians seldom killed the Original. 
They looked with veneration on this gigantic brute, 
viewing it as the dignified progenitor of elk and deer, 
which formed their staple articles of life. To have a 
moose browse in the vicinity of an encampment pres- 
aged victory in war, to find a moose head or antlers 
in the forest, good luck in the chase or domestic life. 
The moose stood for all that was biggest, noblest and 
best in Indian life, it typified all outdoors, the grand 
free scope of the wilderness. To single out such a 
splendid animal for slaughter, while all around were 
myriads of deer, herds of elk. companies of bears and 
countless smaller game, seemed to the Indian mind, 
with its Mosaic sense of justice, almost a sacrilege. 
Consequently the moose were never killed unless in 
dire necessity, or in the later days of the Indian race 
when they were desperate and had lost many of their 
former ideals. Rut it was galling for them to see the 
white men slay moose without quarter, to see them 
disregard sporting standards that had been maintain- 
ed for centuries. Among the proudest and shrewd- 
est Indians residing in the Juniata Valley was Young 
Jacob, the youngest son of the knightly defender of 
Fort Kittanning, Captain Jacobs. Inborn was his 
mistrust of the white men, whose wanton destruction 
of forests, game and fish went hand in hand, he felt, 
with the complete annihilation of his own race. He 
resented the friendly advances made by the newcom- 



3G THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

ers to the copper-colored aborigines. He held aloof 
from all gatherings where the two races apparently 
fraternized together. He would listen to no compli- 
ments, accept no favors from the white men. He 
never forgave the wrongs of his own family. James 
Logan, or Tah-gah-jute. was the only other Pennsyl- 
vania Indian who held similar views to a marked de- 
gree. He often told Young Jacob as they rested un- 
der the shade of the giant white oaks at Logan's 
Spring, near Reedsville, that the white men wished 
the entire Indian race under the sod, and would put 
them there as soon as they could. "Some of us," he 
declaimed tragically, "they will kill w^ith bullets, oth- 
ers of us they will kill with poison called rum. our 
women and children thev will starve to death." Lo- 
gan's greatest sorrow was that he could not impress 
hiis ideas on the other Indians. They laughed away 
his fears, drank the white man's bad whiskey, barter- 
ed and played with him on all occasions, suspecting 
nothing, fearing nothing. Logan would go on to say 
that a lumdred years in the future, when the proud 
Indian race remained but as a faint remnant of its 
former strength and greatness, his words would prove 
true, but now he was looked upon as such an anarch- 
ist that he could not even impress his own brothers, 
Thachnecloarus, or Captain Logan, and John Petty 
Shikellemy. But Young Jacob shared Logan's views 
to the minutest detail ; he was intuitive, and he had 
proofs of the white man's perfidy. Never could he 
be influenced by soft speeches or tawdry gifts. He 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 37 

would be a true reclman of the forest, uncorrupted to 
the last. He had as one of his special missions in life 
to save the wild animals and birds of the Juniata Val- 
ley from extermination. He traveled up and down the 
three branches, preaching toleration, moderation, con- 
servation, among the drink-ridden Indians, who still 
lingered at their old hunting grounds. He begged 
them to cherish their old ideals, only to kill such game 
as was absolutely necessary for food and clothing. 
Even if the white men killed right and left, and per- 
mitted dead game to rot in the woods, which they call- 
ed ''sport,'' the Indians should kill moderately, as they 
did in the past, for was i¥5t the wild life a gift from 
the Great Spirit, and should be carefully tended as 
such? But most of his preaching fell on deaf ears. 
Homeless, drunken savages were out of touch with 
the high principles of the past; they wanted to kill just 
as their white corrupters were doing. Young Jacob 
was like an echo from the past, a past so distant that 
it hardly seemed possible ever to have existed. And 
once in 'a great while Young Jacob argued with white 
men on the impropriety of wasting wild life. Sport, 
as defined by the Indians, meant harmless pleasure, 
physical exercise, feats of skill, fun, the chase, but 
never wanton destruction of any gift of the Great 
Spirit. But the white men could not see it that way, 
as long as they had guns they liked to practice on liv- 
ing targets, to see how many animals or birds could be 
killed in a day or hour, besides game was a nuisance 
in a rapidly developing country. The game was in the 



38 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

woods to be killed, and if they did not kill it, some- 
body else would. And they laughed in Young Jacob's 
face as the price of his pains. All this served to deep- 
en his hatred for the cruel white men who claimed 
they were "civilizing" the Juniata Valley, but to his 
mind desolating it. It grieved Young Jacob to see the 
Indians yielding to the white men's false titles and 
moving westward without a protest. He longed to 
fire their hearts with a sense of their wrongs, and lead 
them in a blood}- war against their foes. With this in 
view he traveled up and down the valley, preaching a 
gospel of resistance. And sometimes he crossed over 
into the Allegheny headwaters beyond Kittanning 
Point. Almost every Indian was content to follow the 
white men's orders and move on, but occasionally he 
met one who was sober enough to realize the terrible 
injustice of it all. But the Indians who felt that way 
would say: "What you state is true; we are being 
robbed and murdered ; but what can we do when the 
majority of us is willing to submit?" It was a hope- 
less task, the Indians were a doomed race. Still Young 
Jacob's energy was inexhaustible, he would not admit 
his teachings fruitless. He continued his missionary 
work, trusting that some spark from his torch of hate 
might kindle the unhappy red race to a last defiant 
stand. He carried on his work so quietly that none 
of the white men in authority suspected that he was 
any more than a surly, disgruntled savage^ as befitted 
the son of a defeated Indian chieftain. And he was 
glad that they felt that way about him. Otherwise 




HON. HORATIO SEYMOUR. 

Governor of New York 1852-1854, 1862-1864. 

(Slayer of One of the Last Moose in 

New York State, 1859.) 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 39 

there would be a price on his head, or he would be 
ordered out of Pennsylvania on pain of death, like 
was meted out to the resisting Logan. He played his 
part better than Logan had done, and it gratified his 
savage heart. It was on one of his homeward trips 
from the Allegheny River that he shed the first white 
blood, which put a price on his head, and made him a 
skulking exile to the last of his days. He had been 
visiting the abandoned Indian settlements at Logstown 
and Kittanning, at the last-named important town 
viewing the grave of his defeated but not dishonored 
father. Captain Jacobs. This chieftain, named for a 
German ironmaster in Lancaster County, was one of 
the most heroic Indians in all the annals of the red 
race in Pennsylvania. He had followed the Indian 
trail across the mountains, his ultimate destination be- 
ing Black Log Valley and Standing Stone. Near Kit- 
tanning Point, on Burgoon's Run, he had built a lean- 
to of boughs, expecting to be joined there by a couple 
of Indian spies who had gone down the Allegheny 
River in a canoe, and were to travel eastward by way 
of Laurel Ridge. On the night of his arrival, to his 
great pleasure, a giant moose ambled out of the for- 
est and began leisurely browsing on the twigs of the 
moosewood trees which formed an undergrowth of the 
great hardwood forest. Apart from his delight in 
watching the monster's antics, as he bent down the 
trees and nibbled at the tenderest twigs, much as an 
elephant would feed, was the feeling that the beast 
foretold that the propaganda which he was promot- 



40 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

ing would some day become a reality. The moose 
saw the Indian, and looked at him with his comical 
little eyes, but he had perfect confidence that the red- 
man meant him no harm. For several days and nights 
the mammoth animal made the vicinity of Young Ja- 
cob's camp his headquarters. He became so used to 
the Indian's presence that he kept as close to him as 
if he had been a big mule. On the evening of the 
third day Young Jacob was getting ready to start on 
his journey, as evidently his Indian friends had been 
detained or gone by a different route. His chief re- 
gret was at leaving the moose, which stood munching at 
the succulent twigs. He liked to travel by night, it 
was cooler, and as he knew every foot of the way he 
could travel further. While he was adjusting his pack 
on his back he heard the twigs crack and looked up. 
Perhaps it was another Original, and he had been 
camping in a moosic rendezvous ! But instead of an- 
other moose he saw a solitary white man, clad in a 
green shirt, buckskin trousers, and moccasins, and 
carrying a long rifle. It is hard to tell whether the 
newcomer saw the Indian or the moose first. In any 
event he raised his firearm and took aim at the un- 
suspecting animal, which kept on browsing. When 
Young Jacob saw the white man's intentions, he stepped 
forward, saying politely, for all Indians, past and 
present, have been noted for their courtesy, "Brother, 
don't kill that moose. The woods are full of deer, if 
you are hungry, and the moose is a pet of mine." But 
the white man only sneered, and pulling the trigger, 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 41 

the ball sped with unerring aim, lodging in the big 
Original's heart. With an awful bellow of pain, 
mingled with surprise, the animal turned and charged 
on his white destroyer. The hunter, who reloaded his 
gun deftly, let the moose get within a few feet of hiiii, 
when he hred again, but the big brute had been already 
mortally wounded, and fell without the aid of the sec- 
ond shot. With a sound like a falling pine the Orig- 
inal crashed to the earth, lying dead among the ferns 
and hazel bushes, his wide-spreading palmated antlers 
stretching out on either side like the knives of a reap- 
er. Planting one foot on the dead animal's swarthy 
proboscis, the white man struck a silly attitude. Young 
Jacob, supposed savage, yet in reality a model of gen- 
tility and toleration, looked at him a moment in dis- 
gust. Then calmly he asked him what he intended to 
do with the mammoth carcass in the middle of sum 
mer. The wdiite man stroked his long beard a moment 
and said, with a great show of insouciance, "Why, of 
course, leave it. What else could I do with it?" That 
was too much for the fair-minded Indian. The white 
man had killed a harmless moose for "sport" and now 
was going to leave it to rot and feed the ravens. He 
could contain himself no longer, and cursed the pi'.e- 
face roundly for his folly. "Why," he shouted, "that 
moose was around my camp for three days and nights, 
happy and doing no harm, and I thought no more of 
shooting him than I would the little singing birds in 
the trees above. We Indians only kill when we have 
to ; we have sense." The white man's temper was 



42 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

equally aroused, and he swore at the Indian in turn. 
"You say you Indians only kill when you have to. "^'ou 
are damn fools. We white men kill when we want to, 
and intend to kill everything before we get through." 
With that he raised his rifle threateningly. Bur ^:oung 
Jacob suspecting such a motive, and forgetting that 
the white man had not reloaded his weapon, pulled 
his own trigger first, and the paleface fell to the earth, 
a bullet through his lungs. When the redman saw 
what he had done he showed no remorse, until on 
picking up the white hunter's rifle he found it empty. 
Then he threw down his own gun and went to the 
dying man's side. Stooping down he said to him: 
"White man, I cannot call you brother now. I am 
sorry for what I have done. I did not remember that 
your gun was empty." But the white man, rolling his 
eyes which were glazing with death and staring at his 
slayer, cursed the Indian with his dying breath, then 
closed his eyes in death. As he passed away Young 
Jacob was leaning over him. and muttered, "Now you 
know how it feels to be in the moose's place." The 'lie 
was cast. Young Jacob had now been added to ihe 
list of Indian murderers. It would be a waste of time 
to bury the dead man, the wolves would dig him out. 
The crime would be discovered sooner or later. So, 
without deigning to rifle the corpse's pockets or toucli 
his gun and powder horn, he left him lying in the now 
profound darkness, within a dozen feet of the dead 
moose. It was there that the two Indians, arriving 
from Laurel Ridge found the body the next morning. 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 43 



Though they suspected some such episode as whit 
had actually happened, knowing Young Jacob's nature 
so well, they seized upon it as a good excuse to curry 
favor with the white men. So they went through the 
dead man's effects, finding documents which identified 
him as Jacob Glelson, an adventurer and land pros- 
pector from Pennsbury on the Susquehanna. From 
the look of things he had been shot down by an Indian, 
Young Jacob, in cold Ijlood. They made haste to re- 
port the crime when they arrived at Standing Stone. 
The virtuous Proprietary Government, on the alert to 
avenge a white man's death, but sometimes singular- 
ly apathetic when an Indian was slain, no matter what 
the circumstances, set its wheels in motion to appre- 
hend the savage murderer. .\. reward was offered, 
and the news spread to the four corners of the wilder- 
ness. Young Jacob sensed this situation perfectly, and 
made himself a fugitive. When the pursuit became 
too hot he allied himself with the Tories and was one 
of the real leaders of that treacherous band. The con- 
tempt which the settlers once had for him changed to 
fear. Many were the white men ambushed and cruel- 
ly slain by his direction. His youth, his dash, and his 
close relationship to the (dd chiefs gave him the so- 
briquet of "the king's son." He seemed to be the ac- 
tive agent for all the devilish conduct of Indians and 
white renegades. The government was most anxious 
to apprehend him to atone for Glelson's "murder," 
and to remove the ring-leader of so many bloody deeds. 
It had not been forgotten how Young Jacol/s father 



44 THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

and his warriors had been rounded up at Kittanning 
l>y a force of three hundred intrepid men sent after 
them from Fort Shirley, under the command of the 
famous Colonel John Armstrong, for whom /Vrm- 
strong County was named, and to whom the city oi 
Philadelphia presented a silyer medal for his great 
victory. It was in the month of September, in the. 
year 175G, when the attacking force surprised the 
Indian band at three o'clock in the morning. They had 
been guided to the town through the darkness by the 
whooping of the Indians, who were holding a war- 
dance. Young Jacob had urged them to save theii 
energies for a better purpose, but to no avail. And it 
was he, with clearer senses than the rest, at dawn first 
noticed the attacking party crossing the corn field 
which bordered the settlement. Rousing the sleepy- 
eyed defenders, he posted them at the loopholes in 
Captain Jacob's redoubt. A shot from Young Ja- 
cob's rifle wounded Colonel Armstrong in the shoul- 
der, and he fell in a heap. Directing the forces from 
where he lay, he ordered that the Indians' huts be set 
on fire, as the redmen refused quarter. The redmen 
mocked their efforts to fire the buildings, but some of 
the soldiers with reckless bravery were able to sta^'t 
the blaze going at one corner of Captain Jacobs's 
house. During a lull in the firing the old chieftain, his 
squaw and Young Jacob, "the king's son," attempted 
to escape from the Inirning building through a window 
nearest the river. Captain Jacobs, in assisting his 
sqtiaw through the window, was shot in the head and 



THE BLACK MOOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 45 

he fell back dead amid the smoke. The squaw plung- 
ed bravely into the water, but was shot dead. Young 
Jacob, not wishing to die a coward's death, sprang 
through the window and reached the opposite shore 
of the river before he fell wounded, pierced bv half a 
dozen balls. The first reports had it that he was kill- 
ed. A party of Indians who arrived on the far shore 
after the battle was in progress, at the risk of their 
lives rescued the courageous young warrior and car- 
ried him back into the forest. There in a dismal glade, 
in a haunt of night herons, he was nursed back to 
health, as befitted "the king's son." Rut after years of 
{^lotting Young Jacob was shot to death ignobly with 
Weston and his Tories, when they were siu'prised at 
Fort Kittanning Gap in 1778. And thus ended the 
earthly career of one of the most remarkable Indians 
of the Juniata, an unreconcilable to the last, fighting 
for the ancient ideals, for "life, liberty and the i)ur- 
suit of happiness." And when the report was sent 
broadcast that Young Jacob was among the fallen, the 
slaughter of the Tories at Kittanning was accounted 
doubly a victory. But when James Logan, or Tali- 
Gah-Jute, heard the news out in Ohio, he grieved si- 
lently and long. He thought of the old days in Penn- 
sylvania, at the "Logan Spring" where at his favor- 
ite resting place, he had spent so manv hours in con- 
ference with the dead warrior. And his grief wa'^ 
deep, because he knew that the Indian race had lost 
its sincerest cham])ion ; that the hoped-for renaissance 
would never be. 



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